Mike’s Middle Distance Magic: It’s Kitchen Sink Time! Arghh

I’ve left writing this blog till lunch time Friday, mainly as this week has been a bit of a washout so far! I missed my long run Monday, did flexibility Tuesday, missed my swim Wednesday. So what to write about! Well I’ve started to make up for it as I smashed the workouts on Thursday and Friday!

Due to a poor three days with missed sessions I felt pretty flat and lethargic come Thursday morning! So I knew I had to put a good session in on Thursday. Well last week I struggled on this one. It was 3 x 5 min hill reps around FTP with 1 min RI. Last week I just didn’t seem to recover in the 1 min recovery and found the whole workout pretty tough!

This week I started off slightly more conservatively. One because I hadn’t trained for three days and secondly I didn’t want to blow up come the third rep. My first rep went pretty good. On the second my trainer overheated and I lost resistance, but I still kept within the correct zone, then come the third rep I felt great. I upped the resistance on the trainer to the top of the designated zone and just went for it. I am really happy with that. It boosted my confidence no end! Below is the workout!

Next up was Friday’s workout, which consisted of 8 x 800m. I’ve only just done this, so Ray hasn’t looked at it yet, but what a workout!

All 800m were done around 7:30 a mile pace! I certainly made up with that and absolutely killed that session, if I don’t mind saying so myself. There were two more reps than last week and my pace was better. I loved this workout!

It is a shame that my heart rate strap was faulty. I’m not sure if it was because of the rain or if it needs a new battery. I will get that sorted before this weekend’s workouts, which brings me onto my title of this blog!

The Kitchen Sink! I honestly think Ray is trying to kill me with this one, haha. This is going to be by far my biggest bike ride I have ever done! I’m adding this into this week’s blog as I want no excuse to not get this workout done. I’m treating this workout as a race. It’s the only way I think I’m going to pull myself together and be able to get this one done. Just look at this workout below! I’m like, “Lets smash it, get it done and build massive confidence going into another week”. Tune in next week to see whether I survive this or if it does actually kill me, haha.

– Mike Catton

Mike is training for some triathlons and half Ironman in 2019. Check in next Monday for his next article about his training journey.

1 week agoYesterday our tour group of 15 were dropped at the start of the section of Wall which is part of the course for the half marathon on Saturday. 3.3km later we arrived back at what will be the start & finish line area. Climbing up & down steps is a challenge as I train on the flat! It took me a while to get "warmed up". The smog was quite evident. Not all the wall is steps. Some parts were slippery. It is amazing to think how old the Wall is and how it was built. It took me 2

Training Plan of the Month – May 2019

As you follow the programme you will find yourself swimming your 1,500m faster. Now whether that is a PB or not will depend on how fast you have swum in the past, but it will definitely be faster at the end of the 4 weeks than it is now. With this programme people improve on average nearly 2 minutes, with some people improving by over 10%.

Designed for triathletes who have limited time to train but can squeeze two short 2km sessions in each week. The primary goal of this training plan is to prepare you to swim 1,500m faster than you did at the start of the programme.